Near the end of the haunting graphic novel
Genius by Steven T. Seagle & Teddy Kristiansen, the main character — a physicist named
Ted — has an epiphany of a kind.

Ted was once a prodigy, a kid so smart he almost couldn’t be taught, recruited at 22 to be part
of the research team at the prestigious Pasadena Technical Institute. And where is Ted after a
decade of journeyman work?

He has two kids and a wife who might be dying. He’s trapped with the pressures of a family in
disarray and a job he no longer wants.

His saving grace is his love for Albert Einstein, who holds a place in his life akin to God.

“I mean, I’m an atheist,” Ted explains. “Most thinking people are — but Einstein is the pinnacle
of a thinking man.”

As
Genius progresses, this relationship becomes increasingly prominent, until Einstein
himself is animated in the pages, discussing the nature of the universe, just waiting for that one
idea, that one revelation, for everything to “start anew.”

That’s a risky move, to invoke not just any genius but the genius of geniuses; there are so many
ways to go wrong.

But Seagle and Kristiansen keep the mystery of genius intact by making it a bit elliptical.

And Einstein? He’s a ghost, a cipher, which is only fitting, because it is Ted who has
re-dreamed him into being.

Throughout
Genius, Seagle and Kristiansen overlap layers of narrative in the visuals. The present is
illustrated in a flat, gray wash, its edges muted, as if to highlight the fact that we don’t know
where it will go.